I was surprised that even here in Portland, OR…not far from downtown…I was on my bicycle and pulled into a small shopping center. I guess you could call it a strip mall, but it was pretty small and completely surrounded by small residential streets.
So imagine my surprise when (a) I couldn’t find any bike parking in front of the main grocery store. I had to walk entirely across the parking lot and over to the side of a dentist’s office. Then (b) I went back to the grocery store and discovered it had no indoor seating. There was plenty of room from what I could tell—they had an entire wall dedicated to greeting cards and another entire wall dedicated to flowers. But nope, nobody can sit here—even though they have a significant large deli! They did offer a very bland outdoor seating area over on the side of the building, but given it’s been windy and a bit drizzly I decided against it. (Also it was deserted for obvious reasons.)
Folks, I am so weary of bike/pedestrian-unfriendly retail. The accommodations car drivers get that we don’t continues to astound me—even in areas which are presumably “progressive”. 🤨
Perhaps. Your weather may demand more indoor accomodations. Just pointing out it’s not a grocery store issue. I’d say the landlord of the mall probably has the most incentive to support public infrastructure demand, but leases these days push all that on shops anyways. Who knows.
We had so many unused bike racks we started replacing the boring loops with sculpture/art bike racks. They’re kinda nice. And tend to take up less space. Would try suggesting those.
